Idylls of the King
By
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Geraint and Enid

Then said Geraint, 'I wish no better fare:I never ate with angrier appetiteThan when I left your mowers dinnerless.And into no Earl's palace will I go.I know, God knows, too much of palaces!And if he want me, let him come to me.But hire us some fair chamber for the night,And stalling for the horses, and returnWith victual for these men, and let us know.'

'Yea, my kind lord,' said the glad youth, and went,Held his head high, and thought himself a knight,And up the rocky pathway disappeared,Leading the horse, and they were left alone.

But when the Prince had brought his errant eyesHome from the rock, sideways he let them glanceAt Enid, where she droopt: his own false doom,That shadow of mistrust should never crossBetwixt them, came upon him, and he sighed;Then with another humorous ruth remarkedThe lusty mowers labouring dinnerless,And watched the sun blaze on the turning scythe,And after nodded sleepily in the heat.But she, remembering her old ruined hall,And all the windy clamour of the dawsAbout her hollow turret, plucked the grassThere growing longest by the meadow's edge,And into many a listless annulet,Now over, now beneath her marriage ring,Wove and unwove it, till the boy returnedAnd told them of a chamber, and they went;Where, after saying to her, 'If ye will,Call for the woman of the house,' to whichShe answered, 'Thanks, my lord;' the two remainedApart by all the chamber's width, and muteAs two creatures voiceless through the fault of birth,Or two wild men supporters of a shield,Painted, who stare at open space, nor glanceThe one at other, parted by the shield.

On a sudden, many a voice along the street,And heel against the pavement echoing, burstTheir drowse; and either started while the door,Pushed from without, drave backward to the wall,And midmost of a rout of roisterers,Femininely fair and dissolutely pale,Her suitor in old years before Geraint,Entered, the wild lord of the place, Limours.He moving up with pliant courtliness,Greeted Geraint full face, but stealthily,In the mid-warmth of welcome and graspt hand,Found Enid with the corner of his eye,And knew her sitting sad and solitary.Then cried Geraint for wine and goodly cheerTo feed the sudden guest, and sumptuouslyAccording to his fashion, bad the hostCall in what men soever were his friends,And feast with these in honour of their Earl;'And care not for the cost; the cost is mine.'

And wine and food were brought, and Earl LimoursDrank till he jested with all ease, and toldFree tales, and took the word and played upon it,And made it of two colours; for his talk,When wine and free companions kindled him,Was wont to glance and sparkle like a gemOf fifty facets; thus he moved the PrinceTo laughter and his comrades to applause.Then, when the Prince was merry, asked Limours,'Your leave, my lord, to cross the room, and speakTo your good damsel there who sits apart,And seems so lonely?' 'My free leave,' he said;'Get her to speak: she doth not speak to me.'Then rose Limours, and looking at his feet,Like him who tries the bridge he fears may fail,Crost and came near, lifted adoring eyes,Bowed at her side and uttered whisperingly:

'Enid, the pilot star of my lone life,Enid, my early and my only love,Enid, the loss of whom hath turned me wild — What chance is this? how is it I see you here?Ye are in my power at last, are in my power.Yet fear me not: I call mine own self wild,But keep a touch of sweet civilityHere in the heart of waste and wilderness.I thought, but that your father came between,In former days you saw me favourably.And if it were so do not keep it back:Make me a little happier: let me know it:Owe you me nothing for a life half-lost?Yea, yea, the whole dear debt of all you are.And, Enid, you and he, I see with joy,Ye sit apart, you do not speak to him,You come with no attendance, page or maid,To serve you — doth he love you as of old?For, call it lovers' quarrels, yet I knowThough men may bicker with the things they love,They would not make them laughable in all eyes,Not while they loved them; and your wretched dress,A wretched insult on you, dumbly speaksYour story, that this man loves you no more.Your beauty is no beauty to him now:A common chance — right well I know it — palled — For I know men: nor will ye win him back,For the man's love once gone never returns.But here is one who loves you as of old;With more exceeding passion than of old:Good, speak the word: my followers ring him round:He sits unarmed; I hold a finger up;They understand: nay; I do not mean blood:Nor need ye look so scared at what I say:My malice is no deeper than a moat,No stronger than a wall: there is the keep;He shall not cross us more; speak but the word:Or speak it not; but then by Him that made meThe one true lover whom you ever owned,I will make use of all the power I have.O pardon me! the madness of that hour,When first I parted from thee, moves me yet.'

At this the tender sound of his own voiceAnd sweet self-pity, or the fancy of it,Made his eye moist; but Enid feared his eyes,Moist as they were, wine-heated from the feast;And answered with such craft as women use,Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chanceThat breaks upon them perilously, and said:

'Earl, if you love me as in former years,And do not practise on me, come with morn,And snatch me from him as by violence;Leave me tonight: I am weary to the death.'

Low at leave-taking, with his brandished plumeBrushing his instep, bowed the all-amorous Earl,And the stout Prince bad him a loud good-night.He moving homeward babbled to his men,How Enid never loved a man but him,Nor cared a broken egg-shell for her lord.

But Enid left alone with Prince Geraint,Debating his command of silence given,And that she now perforce must violate it,Held commune with herself, and while she heldHe fell asleep, and Enid had no heartTo wake him, but hung o'er him, wholly pleasedTo find him yet unwounded after fight,And hear him breathing low and equally.Anon she rose, and stepping lightly, heapedThe pieces of his armour in one place,All to be there against a sudden need;Then dozed awhile herself, but overtoiledBy that day's grief and travel, evermoreSeemed catching at a rootless thorn, and thenWent slipping down horrible precipices,And strongly striking out her limbs awoke;Then thought she heard the wild Earl at the door,With all his rout of random followers,Sound on a dreadful trumpet, summoning her;Which was the red cock shouting to the light,As the gray dawn stole o'er the dewy world,And glimmered on his armour in the room.And once again she rose to look at it,But touched it unawares: jangling, the casqueFell, and he started up and stared at her.Then breaking his command of silence given,She told him all that Earl Limours had said,Except the passage that he loved her not;Nor left untold the craft herself had used;But ended with apology so sweet,Low-spoken, and of so few words, and seemedSo justified by that necessity,That though he thought 'was it for him she weptIn Devon?' he but gave a wrathful groan,Saying, 'Your sweet faces make good fellows foolsAnd traitors. Call the host and bid him bringCharger and palfrey.' So she glided outAmong the heavy breathings of the house,And like a household Spirit at the wallsBeat, till she woke the sleepers, and returned:Then tending her rough lord, though all unasked,In silence, did him service as a squire;Till issuing armed he found the host and cried,'Thy reckoning, friend?' and ere he learnt it, 'TakeFive horses and their armours;' and the hostSuddenly honest, answered in amaze,'My lord, I scarce have spent the worth of one!''Ye will be all the wealthier,' said the Prince,And then to Enid, 'Forward! and todayI charge you, Enid, more especially,What thing soever ye may hear, or see,Or fancy (though I count it of small useTo charge you) that ye speak not but obey.'

And Enid answered, 'Yea, my lord, I knowYour wish, and would obey; but riding first,I hear the violent threats you do not hear,I see the danger which you cannot see:Then not to give you warning, that seems hard;Almost beyond me: yet I would obey.'

'Yea so,' said he, 'do it: be not too wise;Seeing that ye are wedded to a man,Not all mismated with a yawning clown,But one with arms to guard his head and yours,With eyes to find you out however far,And ears to hear you even in his dreams.'

With that he turned and looked as keenly at herAs careful robins eye the delver's toil;And that within her, which a wanton fool,Or hasty judger would have called her guilt,Made her cheek burn and either eyelid fall.And Geraint looked and was not satisfied.

Then forward by a way which, beaten broad,Led from the territory of false LimoursTo the waste earldom of another earl,Doorm, whom his shaking vassals called the Bull,Went Enid with her sullen follower on.Once she looked back, and when she saw him rideMore near by many a rood than yestermorn,It wellnigh made her cheerful; till GeraintWaving an angry hand as who should say'Ye watch me,' saddened all her heart again.But while the sun yet beat a dewy blade,The sound of many a heavily-galloping hoofSmote on her ear, and turning round she sawDust, and the points of lances bicker in it.Then not to disobey her lord's behest,And yet to give him warning, for he rodeAs if he heard not, moving back she heldHer finger up, and pointed to the dust.At which the warrior in his obstinacy,Because she kept the letter of his word,Was in a manner pleased, and turning, stood.And in the moment after, wild Limours,Borne on a black horse, like a thunder-cloudWhose skirts are loosened by the breaking storm,Half ridden off with by the thing he rode,And all in passion uttering a dry shriek,Dashed down on Geraint, who closed with him, and boreDown by the length of lance and arm beyondThe crupper, and so left him stunned or dead,And overthrew the next that followed him,And blindly rushed on all the rout behind.But at the flash and motion of the manThey vanished panic-stricken, like a shoalOf darting fish, that on a summer mornAdown the crystal dykes at CamelotCome slipping o'er their shadows on the sand,But if a man who stands upon the brinkBut lift a shining hand against the sun,There is not left the twinkle of a finBetwixt the cressy islets white in flower;So, scared but at the motion of the man,Fled all the boon companions of the Earl,And left him lying in the public way;So vanish friendships only made in wine.